“I was in the ocean, she said, when I saw an orca. I swam fast towards it in a sort of spiralling motion, like I’d made myself into a torpedo. As I got nearer I could hear that the orca was making a series of ethereal sounds; it was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.”I have spent part of the past months half-deaf, hearing only part of the sounds of the bush around my train carriage. So, here, I find myself contemplating sound, music, ears, and silence.